M.T.A. Races to Finish 2nd Avenue Subway as Deadline Looms

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is rushing to finish the long-delayed Second Avenue subway this month, but officials at a board meeting Monday once again did not announce an opening date, with less than three weeks left to meet their deadline, Dec. 31.

Under pressure from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, officials at the authority said that workers were making progress at three new stations on the Upper East Side of Manhattan but that they still had to complete a series of tests to make sure the stations would be ready for subway riders by Dec. 31. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat who controls the authority, was “cautiously optimistic” that the deadline would be met, his office said.

Thomas F. Prendergast, the chairman of the authority, echoed those comments at a board meeting on Monday, saying he was also “cautiously optimistic,” but he did not give an opening date for the line. Workers have finished installing elevators and escalators at the stations, and the final tests were scheduled to be completed by Dec. 23, officials from the authority said.

After nearly a century of planning and discussion, the Second Avenue subway line will start as an extension of the Q line, with three new stations at 72nd, 86th and 96th Streets. The first phase, which cost about $4.4 billion to build, will be the most ambitious expansion of New York’s subway system in a half-century. It is expected to ease overcrowding on the Lexington Avenue line, one of the city’s most congested routes.

On Monday, Kent Haggas, an independent engineer on the project who has been skeptical that the authority will be able to meet the deadline, was suddenly optimistic. He said the rate of systems testing at the stations had more than doubled in the last few weeks.

“The rate of test completions, which has been a concern of mine for several months, has increased greatly, and I feel it’s now on track to finish by the end of the year,” Mr. Haggas said.

Mr. Haggas said that the stations were ready for the most part and that workers were putting the finishing touches on them and cleaning up after the construction.

Mr. Cuomo has pressed the authority to meet the year-end deadline in an effort to improve the agency’s credibility. Last year, a new subway station at Hudson Yards on the Far West Side of Manhattan opened more than a year and a half late.

After visiting the Second Avenue subway stations in recent days, Mr. Cuomo said that the authority was close to finishing the project but that there was still more work to do.

“We have a few weeks,” the governor told John Catsimatidis in a radio interview on Sunday, “and if I had to bet, John, and it was even money, I would bet that we make it.”

The project was once envisioned as a subway line running nearly the length of Manhattan and even to the Bronx, but the current plans are far less ambitious. The next phase would extend the line to 125th Street in East Harlem.

Nick Sifuentes, the deputy director of the Riders Alliance, an advocacy group, said it was more important for the new line to function properly than for it to open by Dec. 31. He pointed to the Hudson Yards station, where major leaks were discovered months after the opening.

“People are going to remember that the station opened and worked,” he said, “rather than that it opened on the exact date they promised it.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: M.T.A. Races to Meet Dec. 31 Deadline for 2nd Ave. Subway. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe